Sharing CanYa profiles with branch.io

CanYa’s Tech

In the last few years we have seen an explosion of specialised services, normally in the form of API’s (a good video to explain API is right here). At CanYa, we use a lot of third party services to leverage off of experts in a particular field, then build on top of those.

How it works:

Find your CanYa referral code in the main menu inside CanYa. Post on all your social media in the format: app.canya.com.au/CODE (CAPS LOCK THE FIRST 3 LETTERS; eg: ABC123)

Your friends & clients tap on the link.

If they have CanYa installed already, it will open into your profile and favourite you.

If they have not downloaded the app yet, it will take them to the App Store (either Apple iOS or Google Play Store). After installing, CanYa (with the help of branch.io) will know they tapped on your referral code, give you referral credit and ongoing CanYa Rewards!

Nerd details

So why do we need to use a 3rd party service to do this? Well, it turns out this is a difficult problem to solve well across a bunch of devices and platforms. Each device platform has a different way of opening apps from links; for example iOS uses Universal Links where your app registers for a particular URL, in this case app.canya.com.au

In order to do this, you would need to add an apple-app-site-association structured file to your website, handle image previews, descriptions and titles for each link so iMessage & Facebook previews work well, then accurately track & fingerprint users who click on your link, save their details then match with app openings minutes afterwards, plus deliver a data payload of referral codes and so on.